Sept. 4, 2014: Project Passenger Pigeon

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This Thursday, September 4th at 10 am, Wisconsin Public Radio's Route 51 devotes a program to the extinction, 100 years ago this week, of the passenger pigeon, whose flocks once darkened the skies of northern Wisconsin. The anniversary is being marked by programs and exhibits at both the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum of Wausau and the UW-Stevens Point Museum of Natural History. Our guests include Stanley A. Temple, Beers-Bascom Professor Emeritus in Conservation, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Senior Fellow of the Aldo Leopold Foundation; Kathy Kelsey Foley, director of the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum; and Ray Reser, Director of the UW-Stevens Point Museum of Natural History. Temple will discuss his research which he will share this weekend with the artists involved in the Woodson’s annual Birds in Art exhibition. Foley will discuss other passenger pigeon related programs at the Woodson, including the exhibition “Legacy Lost & Saved: Extinct and Endangered Birds of North America.” Reser will discuss the ways in which the pigeon’s extinction changed the ecology of northern Wisconsin forests, and the interesting lack of evidence for huge flocks of the bird at ancient Indian archaeological sites.

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